


My Soul Is Like A Black Lake

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: Luther can't sleep.
Relationships: Luther Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	My Soul Is Like A Black Lake

**Author's Note:**

> This is very navel gaze-y but it's been nibbling at the edges of my mind. It appears that it is time for my annual David-and-Saul-parallel, and who am I to argue?

Luther was still getting used to the darkness of night on Earth.

It was never truly dark on the moon, at least not when he was in it. The various instruments around him were forever blinking or flashing, his alarm clock staring at him. There was always just enough light to cast a shadow, even when he was out space walking. 

The mansion was _dark_ \- the kind of darkness that closed over him. He'd forgotten what it was like to lie in the stillness, like someone had drawn great velvet curtains over the world at large and left everything in the stifling, listening silence. 

Luther was becoming well acquainted with the different sorts of darknesses that came around at all hours of the night, because he was not sleeping. Since Dad had died and he'd come back down to Earth, he had been fighting a losing battle with insomnia. First there had been the mystery of who had killed Dad, then the end of the world, plus assimilating to Earth's gravity again. And then the end of the world had come, they'd gone back in time, they'd fixed that, and now when he closed his eyes he could see the mansion crumbling in front of him, or Allison's bleeding throat. He'd lie in his too small bed, then jerk awake because he needed to check some instrument that was still up on the moon.

His siblings kept their own weird sleep habits. They'd all moved back into the mansion, for their own reasons. Even Diego had taken up residence in one of the basement rooms besides a training room, and Luther could occasionally hear the _thud-thud-thud_ of Diego hitting a punching bag, late into the night. 

Klaus and Five stayed up at all hours, and occasionally Luther would walk by the kitchen to find the two of them playing cards, or arguing about something amongst the sea of coffee cups, half finished knitting projects, and notebooks filled with complex equations. Ben would be there was well, sometimes, holding his own cards, sometimes commentating on the game. 

Allison smoked up on the roof, watching the sky and the people. Sometimes Luther sat with her, and he tried not to give her disapproving looks about the cigarettes. She was an adult, after all, and it was her choice. Sometimes, they held hands and watched the sun come up. 

Vanya mostly kept to herself, although he sometimes caught snatches of violin music late at night. The two of them were very... polite these days. Polite, not exactly _comfortable_ , but she didn't flinch when she saw him, and he tried to keep his movements slow and easy, so as not to scare her. Neither of them had exactly forgiven the other one, but it was hard to hold on to grudges, even justified ones, when exhaustion was fogging his mind.

It felt like a fog sometimes, oily and thick, blocking out everything. He could see the basic shape of his thoughts, but not the actual details. He was getting slower in training, and he was having more trouble formulating his plans. It was a good time that crime was at an all time low, or they would be _seriously_ fucked. 

Luther lay in his too narrow bed, and stared into the darkness. He tried to sleep, tried to think of all of the ways that he used to sleep. He'd had trouble sleeping his first few months on the moon as well, always worried that something would go wrong and he'd die in his oversized, ugly ape body, the breath sucked out of him like a juice box.

His bed at the Academy was too small, which was part of the problem. His bed was too small, his room was too stuffy. Sometimes, he lay in his bed like a coffin, and he could feel the air draining out of the room. He'd drift into a fitful sleep, and then he'd jerk awake, his heart hammering in his chest and his breath caught in his throat. The terror would pass after a minute or two, but it left him weary to go back to sleep. 

He had gotten to know all the different types of darkness the way he knew the route he patrolled on the moon, and he wished he could find comfort in their familiarity.

There was no comfort. No comfort, no relief, just endless exhaustion making his thoughts slow and his eyes burn. 

Some nights, he gave up on lying in his bed, and he walked through the house, checking windows, doors. He knew, logically, that he didn’t need to worry about the air escaping, and yet. 

The house seemed to grow, in those quiet, heavy hours. It was as if he tracked through some endless labyrinth that grew or shrank as it saw fit, and was stuck in the middle, trying to get out. Or maybe he was on the outside, trying to get in. Regardless, he kept turning endless corners, going along seemingly brand new corridors, made strange by the darkness and the stillness. It would make sense for it to be a labyrinth - he was a pretty good shoe in for the minotaur. Of course, he was more ape than bull, but his great hairy shoulders and thick, heavy hands weren't too dissimilar from the illustrations in that one book of myths he had read as a kid.

Maybe he was still on the moon. Maybe some important seal had eroded away, and he was freezing to death and suffocating, as his brain played some trick to keep him from panicking. Maybe he would never leave the moon, and would forever be trapped in a tin can surrounded by the barren, rocky dimness. 

By the light of day, all of those musings seemed preposterous. It helped that his siblings were usually around to distract him and keep him company. It was hard to follow his own strange flights of fancy when he was sparring with Diego or arguing with Five or cataloging moon rock samples. It was easier to remember that he was a real person. When it was so late it was early, it became more… questionable. 

He made sure to stay quiet, as he made his way down the stairs, through the echoing front hall. He made his way down, his feet surprisingly quiet the floor went from wood to concrete.He could hear something in the distance, and it was familiar.

It was a reeling, bright sort of tune, and it pulled him towards one of the training rooms. He was in a sub-basement now, and the silence seemed to get heavier. It was like being at the bottom of the ocean, all those tons and tons of earth over his head. His footsteps seemed to be swallowed up, and the music was getting louder.

There wasn't a soundproof cell, in this universe. Maybe their father had found some way to deal with Vanya's powers differently in this universe, or... well, Luther didn't know. He'd never be able to fathom the way his father's mind worked, and by now it was too much work to try. But there was a thick, syrupy light seeping out through the hinges of the door, through the crack. The music seemed to wrap around him, curl around his ankles like a cat, and he leaned against the wall carefully and let it wash over him. 

Vanya was in the middle of the practice room, and she was playing her violin. It was one of the only things that had stayed with them after they'd gone over to this universe. It was bone white, and she refused to part with it. It hadn't seemed worth it, to fight over it. It wasn't as if anyone else had noticed the difference. 

The music didn't sound like the sort of thing that Vanya usually played, although Luther couldn't put his finger on what was different about it. There was more flow to it, and the tone of it seemed much... faster, for lack of a better way of putting it. He closed his eyes, and he imagined the music like golden threads, or rays of light filling the darkness, permeating it like roots breaking a rock. He ended up sitting down, drawing his knees up and resting his forehead against them. Vanya didn't seem to be playing _for_ anything - he'd heard her play when she was training, the way she made the music roil and simmer, bending metal and slashing practice dummies. 

This was different. It seemed to capture the light, golden and sweet, and it quieted down the terror that had been gnawing at him like a snake at a tree route. 

Luther's eyes slid shut, as he let the music drift over him, and he didn't even notice the cold of the concrete floor leeching into his skin through the thinness of his pajama pants.


End file.
